Follow the Kansas Legislature on Education

If you’re interested in education policy in Kansas, here’s a site that you should add to your bookmarks: Kansas Votes. The site. It describes every piece of legislation under consideration. It’s searchable, meaning that you can find legislation of interest by author, legislator, and subject.

Introduced in the Senate on February 1, 2008, to increase funding for K-12 education by increasing the state finance formula’s Base State Aid Per Pupil (BSAPP) from the current $4,433 up to $4,492 for the 2009-2010 school year at an additional cost of $37.2 million. Increasing BSAPP has ripple effects that require funding increases for other parts of the finance formula, amounting to at least another $3.7 million, but this bill does not account for those effects. The Kansas Supreme Court in 2006 forced a three-year $466 million K-12 funding enhancement and this bill effectively adds a fourth year to that program. The latest data current through the 2006-07 school year show that total K-12 funding from federal, state, and local tax sources averages $11,558 per pupil..

Passed in the Senate (37 to 2) on February 21, 2008, to increase funding for K-12 education by increasing the state finance formula’s BSAPP from the current $4,433 up to $4,492 for the 2009-2010 school year at an additional cost of at least $37.2 million. [Vote Details and Comments]

Received in the House on February 22, 2008.

Passed in the House (96 to 29) on April 1, 2008, to increase funding for K-12 education by increasing the state finance formula’s BSAPP from the current $4,433 up to $4,492 for the 2009-2010 school year at an additional cost of at least $37.2 million; and, to increase state K-12 funding by $23 million to replace reductions in federal tax support and make changes to school consolidation law . [Vote Details and Comments]

Received in the Senate on April 1, 2008.

Motion by Rep. Deena Horst (R) on May 2, 2008, to adopt a compromise version of the bill reported by a House-Senate conference committee. The report recommends passage of the House-passed version of the bill with the following changes: make the state funding that replaces lost federal funds effective immediately, but limit it to $9 million; and, create a Special Education Funding Task Force that would make recommendations to the Legislature each year.

The motion passed in the House (101 to 19) on May 2, 2008, to adopt the conference committee report: to increase funding for K-12 education by increasing the state finance formula’s BSAPP from the current $4,433 up to $4,492 for the 2009-2010 school year at an additional cost of at least $37.2 million; to increase state K-12 funding by $9 million to replace some of the reduction in federal tax support; and, to make changes to school consolidation law. [Vote Details and Comments]

Motion by Sen. Jean Schodorf (R) on May 2, 2008, to adopt the conference committee report that was earlier approved by the House.

The motion passed in the Senate (36 to 3) on May 2, 2008, adopting the conference committee report that was already approved by the House: to increase funding for K-12 education by increasing the state finance formula’s BSAPP from the current $4,433 up to $4,492 for the 2009-2010 school year at an additional cost of at least $37.2 million; to increase state K-12 funding by $9 million to replace some of the reduction in federal tax support; and, to make changes to school consolidation. Passage thereby forwards the bill to the governor for her consideration. [Vote Details and Comments]